of him at all comes up to what they called his elbow) have I the
least desire of his acquaintance. From the heel of the masonry,
the rascally, breakneck precipice descended sheer among waste
lands, scattered suburbs of the city, and houses in the building.
I had never the heart to look for any length of time--the thought
that I must make the descent in person some dark night robbing me
of breath; and, indeed, on anybody not a seaman or a steeple-jack,
the mere sight of the Devil's Elbow wrought like an emetic.

I don't know where the rope was got, and doubt if I much cared. It
was not that which gravelled me, but whether, now that we had it,
it would serve our turn. Its length, indeed, we made a shift to
fathom out; but who was to tell us how that length compared with
the way we had to go? Day after day, there would be always some of
us stolen out to the Devil's Elbow and making estimates of the
descent, whether by a bare guess or the dropping of stones. A
private of pioneers remembered the formula for that--or else
remembered part of it and obligingly invented the remainder. I had
never any real confidence in that formula; and even had we got it
from a book, there were difficulties in the way of the application
that might have daunted Archimedes. We durst not drop any
considerable pebble lest the sentinels should hear, and those that
we dropped we could not hear ourselves. We had never a watch--or
none that had a second-hand; and though every one of us could guess
a second to a nicety, all somehow guessed it differently. In
short, if any two set forth upon this enterprise, they invariably
returned with two opinions, and often with a black eye in the
bargain. I looked on upon these proceedings, although not without
laughter, yet with impatience and disgust. I am one that cannot
bear to see things botched or gone upon with ignorance; and the